Seeing Nora Everywhere

“This Is My Life” is the movie that made me want to make movies. I first saw it in second grade, so I wouldn’t have articulated it as such, but that’s what was going on. I must have watched it on VHS eleven or twelve times in one summer, trying hard to grasp something. About its characters? About its construction? On each viewing, a new joke or angle revealed itself to me and its world became richer. I loved Samantha Mathis’s surly teen, Gaby Hoffmann’s quippy innocent, and especially Julie Kavner’s Dot, their single mother, a standup comedian hellbent on self-actualizing despite, or maybe because of, these daughters. But what I really loved was the person orchestrating the whole thing. The costumes, perfectly low-rent polka-dotted blazers and grungy winter hats. The music, a mixture of vaudevillian bounce and Carly Simon’s voice that somehow made the city seem more real than if car horns scored the film. The camerawork, a single gliding shot that followed each family member into her bedroom as she settled into a new apartment in a less than desirable Manhattan neighborhood. I loved whoever was making these actresses comfortable enough to express the minutiae of being a human woman onscreen.

It wasn’t until years later that I understood this was Nora Ephron. I devoured her prose, her other film offerings, and became a fangirl right along with my mother, aunt, grandmother, and every other intelligent woman in the tristate area. Which is why it was so momentous when, in March of 2011, I received a short, perfect e-mail from Ephron, saying she had seen and enjoyed my film and would like to take me to lunch.

I was twenty minutes early, and hid in a corner until I saw Nora enter, greet the hostess, and be shown to the best table in the place. I watched her order a Diet Coke and check her iPhone, and then I finally appeared at the table, already regretting my choice of top. But when she looked up, my fears evaporated. I was just so excited to know her.

Over the course of our year-and-a-half-long friendship, Nora introduced me to, in no particular order: several ear, nose, and throat doctors; the Patagonia jackets she favored when on set because they were “thinner than a sweater but warmer than a parka”; ordering multiple desserts and having small, reasonable bites of all of them (I thought, Oh, so this is what ladies do); the photography of Julius Shulman; the concept of eating lunch at Barneys; self-respect; the complex legend of Helen Gurley Brown; the Jell-O mold; her beloved sister Delia. She explained how to interact with a film composer (“Just say what you’re hearing and what you want to hear”) and what to do if someone screamed at you on the telephone (“Just nod, hang up, and decide you will never allow anyone to speak to you that way again”). She called bullshit on a whole host of things, too: donuts served in fancy restaurants; photo shoots in which female directors are asked to all stand in a cluster wearing mustaches; the idea that one’s writing isn’t fiction if it borrows from one’s life.

Her advice was unparalleled. At one of our lunches this past January, I was sheepishly describing a male companion’s lack of support for my professional endeavors. She nodded in a very “don’t be stupid” way, as if I already knew what I had to do: “You can’t possibly meet someone right now. When I met Nick, I was already totally notorious”—note: Nora was the only person who could make that word sound neither braggy nor sinister—“and he understood exactly what he was getting into. You can’t meet someone until you’ve become what you’re becoming.” Panicked, I asked, “How long will that take?”

Nora considered a moment. “Give it six months.”

I loved her propensity for asking a question when she already knew the correct answer but wanted to let you make a tiny fool of yourself. The best example of this was when we were discussing a popular book and she earnestly asked, “Did you think that was a good book?” I said, “Well, yes,” before Nora came back, sharply, with “It wasn’t.” I later told this story onstage with her, and she laughed as though she knew it was one of her most awesome tricks.

When I brought horribly failed brownies that no one ate to her family Thanksgiving, she didn’t try to placate me, but, rather, said, “I feel that these brownies are destined for a moment in the second season of your show.” (At this point, there hadn’t even been a first.)

After that Thanksgiving—an incredibly lovely evening spent in her home in Los Angeles, watching her beautiful interactions with Nick and Jacob and Max, and tasting a turkey she’d made that even she had to admit was perfect—I went home and likely offended my own mother by announcing that “it was with the kind of family I was meant to have.” From an outsider’s perspective (and I was one of many orphans stranded in L.A. that she let in from the hot), there was a generosity of spirit and a sparkle of frank wit that I’d heretofore only seen in Nora Ephron movies. We discussed current events and played running charades. Nora went around the table asking if any of us would ever kiss a Republican.

The last time I saw her was in April, for a screening of “This Is My Life” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Delia and the writer Meg Wolitzer, whose book the movie was based on. We did a long Q. & A. in which Nora was so generous with an audience of hungry young people that I still get thankful e-mails about it. She discussed directing for the first time, learning to shot-list and talk to a crew. The idea that it had taken her a moment to settle into filmmaking was so deeply comforting. Women asked her openly for life advice, their voices tinged with panic. She explained that being a working mother will never be balanced, so we just need to get over that and try to do the best we can. She explained that you cannot wait around for someone to give you permission to tell your stories. She also gleefully name-checked five or six people she hated in the movie business but asked that the audience please not tweet it (they listened), and said that she was the only woman in Hollywood who had not slept with Sven Nykvist.

Her relationship to “women in film” questions and debates has fully dictated my response: a mix of a raised brow—“Do we really need to go over this again?”—and an understanding that sexism isn’t gone, and that we have to engage in the debate a bit, even when it frustrates us. Still, I’m in awe of her square refusal to be pegged as a woman writer. The gender- and women’s-studies student in me wants to write a thesis on Nora’s contributions, but the Nora devotee simply wants to render her in the type of smart, deceptively basic details that were the trademark of her work.

That night in Brooklyn, she had chosen not to watch her first movie, and so, while it screened, we ate dinner. She tried to order salad, and the restaurant, a hipster farm-to-fork place, said it wasn’t in season and therefore they couldn’t serve it. Nora: “How totally bold.” Later, a pasta came with greens atop it. “O.K., that’s salad.”

After the Q. & A., “This Is My Life” was playing again, on a new print. “Let’s just stay for five minutes,” Nora said, “to see how the print is.” Five turned into ten turned into forty, and Delia and Meg and Nora and I were utterly with the film, comprising almost the whole audience (the first showing had been sold out, but this one promised no Q. & A., and was dead). A few times I pinched myself—getting to watch Nora watch—but mostly I savored my first favorite movie. As a second-grade fan, I didn’t understand that the film hadn’t been a hit, but, despite some glowing reviews, this fact had in some way hindered Nora’s appreciation of her first movie. Twenty years later, she seemed to be reclaiming it, humbly but joyfully. “I watched it on VHS this weekend,” she had told me earlier, “and I actually thought it was pretty good.”

That first time we had lunch, I told Nora that I still lived with my parents in a small windowless back room downtown. Her reaction was slightly amused and appropriately appalled. It was only after reading her essay about starting her life over again as a single mother in the Apthorp that I decided I might be capable of living alone. As I hunted for a place, I tried to use Nora-esque criteria—prewar details, an open courtyard, an eccentric building staff, and neighbors who appeared to dabble in the occult, at least enough for a good story. When I finally found my place I waffled, but when I described it to Nora, she said, “Perfect. You’ll never regret it.”

When I still hadn’t moved three months after taking ownership of the apartment, Nora insisted that I use her contractor, who fixed my little home up in a manner she would have approved of. She had advice about good white paint and how to handle old tile. I told her it was my Apthorp, whatever that means. The first night in my new home I read “Scribble Scribble” by the light of my one lamp. The cover is Nora, all lean shoulders and cap of bobbed hair, looking moody but impish.

This past week, the elevator in my new building both flooded and caught on fire, so an extra doorman had to be hired to carry elderly women up the stairs. I think Nora would find this funny and strange and awful. Every sweaty step I take to get to the sixth floor I hear her name like a mantra.

When searching my inbox last night for an e-mail from Nora, to get the specifics of her phrasing, I came upon this sign-off to a short but sweet one thanking me for lunch: “see you somewhere… xox.” Somewhere, it turns out, is everywhere. I see Nora in the home I wouldn’t live in if not for her, the shot list I make in the van to set in the morning, and the jacket I slip into when the sun comes down (she always sent links along with tips). I see her when the craft services on set isn’t up to par, or in the process of getting to know a man who seems to understand. I see her in the worst hair moments and the best soup moments. I know I am only one of hundreds of women, people, who will miss Nora’s company, and millions who will miss her voice. The opportunity to be friends with Nora in the last year of her life informs the entirety of mine. I am so grateful.

Photograph by Linda Nylind/Eyevine.

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